Using social media without a focused strategy can be akin to endlessly pouring water into a bucket riddled with holes. Here's how to stay on target.
As a finance broker, social media can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how you use it.
According to figures from the 2017 Sensis Social Media Report, 90 percent of big businesses surveyed align their social media practice with a social media strategy – but only 31-40 percent of the surveyed small-to-medium businesses do.
The potential problem with using social media without a strategy is that it can excessively drain your time and energy without yielding many measurable results.
Here are some points to consider to help ensure your social media output is regular, on-point, low-maintenance, and achieving the results that you need.
1. Choose your channels
In 2018, the social media ecosystem looks a lot like that garage you’ve been meaning to declutter. It’s overgrown and impossible to make sense of at a glance. The good news is you’d be wasting your time trying to make sense of it. Rather than set out to spread yourself across all the social media platforms including YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, identify a channel or two that are relevant to your target market and devote yourself to maximising your impact on it. LinkedIn and Facebook are two excellent choices for brokers, as they’re conducive to networking and marketing highly shareable content that both your leads and clients will value.
2. Create an editorial calendar
Everything seems more stressful when done at the last minute. Avoid this stress by using a social media editorial calendar, essentially a plan outlining when and where you’ll post upcoming social media content. Knowing what and when you’ll post frees up your mental space to concentrate on more critical tasks, such as preparing for client meetings. It helps you to be accountable for meeting your social media deadlines and it enables you to schedule your social media publishing for the optimal time. Many social media editorial templates are free, and just a quick Google search away.
3. Create low-effort content
It’s definitely a good idea to provide original content on social media, but there are highly-engaging alternatives that will save you time and energy. Consider curating (reporting on) others’ content for reposting (use images and infographics to boost audience engagement); conduct opinion polls and even stage 30-minute Q&A sessions where you ask your audience to post questions and you provide helpful answers (ensure of course that you answer the questions you have sufficient expertise in).
Ultimately, before you commit to social media, you should have your target market in mind and a strong sense of how much time and energy you’ll need to give to get the exact outcomes you want to achieve maximum return on your time and effort investment.
For more social media and website marketing resources, visit the MFAA's member's-only section of the website here.
